toothpaste on the mirror

The bathroom: A fine, practical, utilitarian sort of space. Oh I know, some people have a spa for a bathroom with a 10-foot wide, 5-foot deep bathtub and a fireplace with candles all over the place. Some people, I believe, would call their bathroom a sanctuary.

At my house the bathroom is the room an inch larger than a closet that just barely fits the necessities, the end. You walk into the sink, take a step and hit the bathtub, and wedged in between the two is the toilet. Apparently, when my house was being built in the 70s, no one could think of a reason that you'd want to actually like that space, or heaven forbid, move around more than 2 feet.

So I like to honor the builders of the 70s by treating my bathroom just as they intended: get in, get done, get out. Showers? 5 minutes. Tooth brushing? Keep it to the maximum 2 minutes. Hand washing? Just long enough to sing my ABCs.

My children are another story -- particularly the 3 youngest. For them, brushing your teeth is a group activity; in fact, if you send one of them up to get it done without anyone else, they'll stop and tell you they can't...because...well, no one else is in there...

Oh, I'd LOVE to know what goes on when they're all in there. For example, why in the world is there a blob of toothpaste on the wall every morning? The wall. Sure, the sink. They're kids, there's bound to be a little toothpaste in the sink, on the counter, or even the faucet. But what, pray tell, are they doing to get toothpaste on the wall every day?

Or in the evenings, after everyone's gone to bed and I head up to take care of my ablutions and other various bathroom activities, why is it that when I go to use some toilet paper, it's all wet? Not sopping, mind you, just wet enough that when you pull on some, a little bit stays on the roll and there you sit holding a scrap of damp, clinging paper in your fingers.

What could they possibly be doing? There's not really water anywhere else, not on the floor or the sink, or the toilet or walls. It's just there on the toilet paper roll.

Then there are the baths. These, unlike the tooth brushing, are one-man jobbers. The Boy, in true "man-form," prefers the shower, and is in and out in seconds. Just long enough, I believe, to barely wet himself, run a bar of soap up and down his body, rinse, and get out. Seriously. I think it's about a minute.

But the girls all love a bath. And I have no idea how they do it, but there are always, always gallons of water on the floor when they're done. I don't know what they do. Are they laying down and swishing the water back and forth to make great waves plunge out of the tub and all over the floor? If they are, I never hear the wave-making, and even in those moments when I have to run in and get something, I hear nothing. The shower curtain is closed and there is no sound whatsoever, save for perhaps the stray drip from the faucet.

I've decided that maybe they just take the first 3 gallons that come out of the faucet and scoop it onto the floor before they turn off the water, so I'll be none the wiser. Who knows?

All I know is I'd love to be a fly on the wall to see what's really going on in there when I'm not around. Then maybe I could at least protect the toilet paper.

Oh well, we can't know all the mysteries of life, can we?